1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for secure communication of information over a wireless link.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One of the areas that has seen substantial improvement is wireless data communications. Wireless security, however, remains an area of concern. In particular, wireless data communications represent a security weakness in the area of data privacy, particularly when using shared, private, or ‘symmetric’ encryption keys to effect privacy. Sharing a symmetric key or pair of keys between a sender and receiver of information over a wireless link is inherently insecure because the key pairs are transmitted over a link that can be observed by anyone within radio range.